Meta has described the proposed penalties from a lawsuit by 29 states as “unsubstantiated” and the damages as “outlandish.” In recent legal filings, the parent company of Facebook — which Mark Zuckerberg has spent over two decades building — warned that it could all come to an end in one fell swoop.
The company argued there is no historical precedent for a sanction of such magnitude in consumer protection enforcement, stating: “A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement.”
The lawsuit accuses Meta of violating child privacy laws by collecting data from underage users. The online giant faces court battles across nearly every state, but four states are threatening penalties totaling $1.4 trillion — an amount nearly equal to its current market capitalization of approximately $1.48 trillion.
Meta further stated that the “sheer magnitude” of the demands from state attorneys general “offends constitutional and ethical limits.”
